Typing the word “shooting” in a google news search today yields stories of nine separate shootings in the last 24 hours just on the first page of that search.

This is part of what we need to consider in the wake of Sandy Hook. There is a massive level of gun violence in this country to which we have become so desensitized we just gloss right over most reports of it in the news. That’s one of the big problems.

Folks, stop being desensitized to everyday gun violence. That is the first thing we have to do to start changing things. As horrific as it was, I am telling you now as I have on my last couple of shows, Sandy Hook is not going to be enough to force any kind of meaningful change. It’s going to take more. It’s going to take a constant reminding people of all of the carnage that happens on a daily basis in this country.
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That is why I say that meaningful gun control is going to take a lot of awareness raising and unfortunately a lot more carnage before it happens. This is something that is frustrating for people in the inner cities, particularly people of color in the inner cities because they have been experiencing this first hand for decades and desperately trying to raise awareness about it.

Take the important step, and this is for everyone who hears this show, take the step at least a couple of days a week and go to Google, click on the News menu tab at the top and then in the search field type the word “shooting” and click the little blue magnifying glass button and check out the results. Do this a couple of times a week and post at least one or two of the shooting articles of the last 24 hours on your facebook or twitter page or mail it to your friends. Get as many other people that you know to do the same.

I did it for the first time today. If enough of us just do this simple thing, I promise you, we will be on the short road to meaningful gun control in this country.

Lutheran (Evangelical Lutheran Church)
Mennonite
Metropolitan Community Church
Moravian Church
New Apostolic Church
Old Catholic Church (not to be confused with the Roman catholic church)
More Light Presbyterians (A Presbyterian denomination supportive of LGBTIQ rights)
Friends General Conference (A Quaker denomination supportive of LGBTIQ rights)
Swedenborgian Church of North America
United Church of Canada
United Church of Christ (Nationally supportive, most local churches are, need to check individually)
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I felt a need to research and post this after learning of the pope's recent statements.

On Sunday morning, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, told the world that armed guards stopped school shootings in Israel. Israel begs to differ. "Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing," LaPierre said sitting calmly on Meet the Press. "They said, 'We're going to stop it,' and they put armed security in every school, and they have not had a problem since then."

Well Mr. Pierre, that would awesome if it were true. But according to Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, it's not. More specifically, the two situations are "fundamentally different," and Israel's actually tightened its gun control laws in recent years. "We didn't have a series of school shootings, and they had nothing to do with the issue at hand in the United States. We had to deal with terrorism," Palmor told the New York Daily News. "What removed the danger was not the armed guards but an overall anti-terror policy and anti-terror operations which brought street terrorism down to nearly zero over a number of years."

1. The tragedy in Connecticut and the right to keep and bear arms.
2. The actions of the Michigan governor and state legislature and the surrounding issues of proportional representation and the war on women and unions.